The use of cellular telephones and the like for accessing the Internet is becoming increasing popular. As wireless data transmission rates continue to increase, the practicality of accessing web pages via such device improves.
The web pages accessed by such mobile network devices as cellular telephones can be referred to mobile web pages. Mobile web pages typically display less content as compared to their regular web page counterparts. This reduction in content is due in part to bandwidth constraints and in part to the size of mobile displays.
One of the items commonly omitted from mobile web pages is a listing of the universal resource locater (URL) for the mobile web page presently being viewed. Listing the URL of a web page presently being viewed is one way that users can prevent phishing.
Phishing is an illegitimate and often illegal attempt to obtain private or sensitive information by deception over the Internet. For example, phishing can be used to obtain user names, account numbers, and passwords for bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and the like. This deception can occur by providing a fake web page that appears to be a legitimate web page. Users, who believe that the web page is its legitimate counterpart, provide sensitive information to the web page.
For example, users may receive an email stating that they need to contact their bank. The email can provide a link to the bank's website. Users that then contact the bank using the link provided in the email are connected to a fake website for the bank instead of the official website for the bank. The fake website may look just as legitimate as the bank's official website. The only apparent difference is the URL. If the user doesn't notice the incorrect URL or if the URL is not displayed, then the user may enter sensitive information into a form that is displayed on the fake web page.
The web pages of banks, brokerage firms, and the like typically require that a user enter a user name, account number, and password into a form to gain further access to the website. Entering this information into the form of a fake web page provides this information to the person responsible for the phishing.
As a further example, a user may visit a fraudulent merchant's website. This fraudulent website may allow the user to click on a link to a website for PayPal® or Google Checkout®. However, rather than taking the user to the legitimate PayPal® or Google Checkout® website, the link on the fraudulent merchant's website takes the user to a fake PayPal® or Google Checkout® website. At the fake PayPal® or Google Checkout® website, the user may enter sensitive information into a form that is displayed there, as discussed above.
Mobile network devices, such as cellular telephones, are particularly susceptible to such deception because the ULR is often not displayed as mentioned above. If the URL is displayed, such as is done on a desktop computer, the user can verify that the URL is correct for the web page being displayed. However, since the URL is often not displayed on cellular telephone when visiting a website, the cellular telephone user may not have an opportunity to verify that the URL is correct. The cellular telephone user is thus undesirably vulnerable to phishing.
Thus, although such cellular telephones have proven generally suitable for their intended purposes, they possess inherent deficiencies which detract from their overall effectiveness and desirability. Therefore, it is desirable to provide an apparatus and method for inhibiting phishing on mobile network devices, such as cellular telephones.